Farm-bill Cuts Unite Liberals, Conservatives

Fresh-faced Democratic legislators don`t often hear an echo of their arguments on farm policy and trace it back to Sen. Jesse Helms (R., N.C.), the born-again doyen of the Far Right.

Nor do rural evangelists of the ``small is beautiful`` gospel often glance to the side and see the man who wants to take over CBS Inc. walking in lockstep.

Strange bedfellows? No doubt about it. But lately, such polar opposites have been galvanized by similar fears about a relatively expensive, ``middle- of-the-road`` farm bill gathering momentum in Congress.

Most legislators have firmly rejected the idea of making major changes in the nation`s complex web of farm programs out of fear of exacerbating the worst slump in farming since the 1930s.

But critics on both ends of the political spectrum argue, with surprising unanimity, that failure to enact more reforms could lead to just such a forbidding consequence.

Nobody`s talking about putting agriculture on a crash course toward free- market economics, as the Reagan administration proposed early this year. That idea was shoveled under a ``Rest in Peace`` marker months ago.

Rather, the Senate debate that began Friday centers on much more modest fallback proposals by the administration, Helms and other senior Republican senators, including Majority Leader Robert Dole of Kansas and Richard Lugar of Indiana.

The main ones would cut a proposed four-year freeze in target prices

--rates that determine the level of income subsidies for corn, wheat, cotton and rice farmers--to one or two years and make 5 percent cuts in each of the remaining years. Others would slash subsidy payments to the largest farmers and channel more money to midsize operators, who are generally the most distressed.

In pushing for such changes, Helms, the chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee, mainly cites the need to cut the cost of the bill, estimated by various analysts at anywhere from $9 billion to $35 billion above a three-year budget goal.

But Helms, who last month became the first chairman to vote against sending the committee`s version of a farm bill to the floor, also argues that relatively high and loosely targeted subsidies encourage overproduction and greater concentration of ownership in farming--complaints long made by the liberal research groups.

Numerous studies support the groups` view that the subsidies, designed to compensate farmers for low commodity prices, reduce the risk of farm expansion and make it easier for more efficient large farmers to buy out smaller ones.

They say this basic inequity is magnified by distribution rules that last year allowed 5 percent of the largest farmers, including dairymen, to receive 39 percent of the total government payments.

``Sen. Helms, believe it or not, has some attractive amendments,``

particularly in the area of greater payment targeting, said Don Ralston, co-director of the Center for Rural Affairs, a small-farm advocacy group in Walthill, Neb.

Rep. Dan Glickman (D., Kan.), one of several junior Democrats who fought in vain earlier this month for greater targeting in a version of the bill passed by the House, is also cheering Helms on in that area.

Glickman voted in favor of the House`s effective five-year freeze in target prices. But he said rejection of his proposals to target more of the benefits to troubled farmers was his ``main disappointment`` with the House bill.

Many farm economists also back the Helms proposals.

Mark Drabsenstott, a senior economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, Mo., said freezing target prices would distort market signals telling farmers to cut production and add to huge surpluses that are depressing crop prices. He said greater targeting of benefits is ``something that needs to happen.``

Nonetheless, most political analysts, including some Republican strategists, give Helms little chance to defeat the four-year freeze in target prices.

Some rate his prospects for reshaping the benefit-payment funnel as slightly better. But others doubt that he`ll accomplish much in this area either.

The main reason is that most of the 47 Senate Democrats and a half-dozen or more farm-state Republicans are likely to band together to oppose any significant changes in the committee bill.

Many of these legislators acknowledge that Congress set target prices abnormally high in 1981 under the mistaken assumption that double-digit inflation would continue to fuel a rapid run-up in farm production costs.

But they argue that the urgent need for cash among many debt-ridden farmers supersedes the goal of cutting output and bringing supply and demand back into balance.

Some, such as Sen. Alan Dixon (D., Ill.), said they might be willing to vote for greater targeting of benefits as a compromise. But other leading Senate Democrats, such as John Melcher of Montana, represent mainly large farmers and seem determined to block any moves to cut their largesse.